Weddingbee boards

My fiance and I became engaged within a month of his brother and fiance. My fiance and I set our wedding date immediately as I wanted a June wedding. We booked our honeymoon within a few weeks as well. My parents are gifting us a one week stay using their timeshare points so we could choose anywhere we wanted to go. The timeshare place only does Saturday-Saturday reservations so we had to book two weeks after our actual wedding as we couldn't go right after our wedding or we'd lose a day (not go until Sunday). Wedding is on 6/9 and honeymoon starts on 6/23.

Fiance's brother and his fiance didn't seem to worried about setting dates, planning, etc. and we had only heard the wedding would be sometime in April. Last week my fiance gets an email from his brothers best man about planning the bachelor party and that it would be in May-obviously the wedding is not in April if the bachelor party is in May. I told my fiance he had to text his brother asap to find out when the wedding actually is. He reponds it is on 6/30-the last day of our honeymoon. The brother and his fiance just randomly switched their sometime in April wedding to June and didn't bother to tell anyone.

I'm appalled they set the date without a courtney notice to us of "hey, we're thinking of doing our wedding in June, I know you're getting married then too, will you be back from your honeymoon?". I don't think that's asking too much. I certainly would have checked if it was the other way around. When we set our date we let everyone know what we were thinking to make sure there weren't any conflicts with the date.

Our honeymoon is a once in a lifetime trip that is out of the country. We were going to fly in late that Saturday at 11:30 PM. We've checked and found one flight which would get us into town at 5 PM so we'd have a chance of making it to the reception. The brothers entire wedding is weird and we know no details, but the ceremony is on Friday so we'd still miss the actual wedding itself. The flight at 5 PM is almost double the cost of the other flights-it's $2800 and the other one is $1500. We can't afford that additional cost. I told my fiance if his family wants us there for the reception, they can pay the additional cost.

Somehow this entire issue has fallen on us to deal with when we didn't do anything wrong. The brother is the one who set the date and didn't bother telling anyone! He then texts my fiance yesterday asking us to cut our honeymoon short by a day and fly back that Friday. I think it's ridiculous to ask us that. This is our honeymoon in a foreign country. Also, our trip is a gift from my parents-if we cut it short there's no refund on the points used for our trip so it's kind of like we're throwing away money. I've checked and we're locked in and cannot change our honeymoon dates. But now either we cut our trip short to come back for the reception part of the wedding or we look like jerks and don't cut our trip short. What are your thoughts/opions?

Okay, I'd think about it a different way. In 10 years, which might you regret - having a 7 day honeymoon and missing FI's brother's wedding or having a shorter 5 day honeymoon and celebrating FI's brother's wedding?

It's an unfortunate situation, but his wedding won't happen again. While your honeymoon won't happen again either, you have every day for the rest of your life to spend with your FI and many more romantic trips you can take. 

@hisgoosegirl:

I think there are a lot of emotions flying around the OP and people involved. I think the first thing that needs to be done is decide what's going to be more important down the road. If it's that they see FI's brother get married, then they need to calmly discuss with each other and FI's family how to afford getting them back without missing too much of their honeymoon. If they can't all find a way to pay for it, then they can say their sorry and that they tried and they would love to skype in to the ceremony and/or reception if possible. 

If they would prefer to not see FI's brother be married and stay on their honeymoon (and yes, this should be up to the FI mostly), then maybe they can still offer to try to video in to the wedding while regretting the invitation to come.

@AnnieAAA: Yes, the actual wedding ceremony is the day before on a Friday. Just the reception is on Saturday. So no matter what, we'd miss the actual ceremony which I think is the most important-at this point I feel like it's just a party we'd be missing. I don't know all the details on the ceremony, but their mom has been a pain through planning and we livid we weren't getting married in a church (our wedding is outdoors) so I think she played a big role in the ceremony being on Friday. Apparently it's a small ceremony in a church with just a few people like the immediate family.

@hisgoosegirl

I agree that the OP's post is understandable, I'd be pretty emotional, too. I also think they don't need to make a final decision today while OP's so upset, that it will take at least several days or a few weeks to find the best solution. And yes, the OP's opinion does matter, and there needs to be a series of conversations here between FI & FBIL and FI & OP and anyone else who can help with a solution. OP's opinion does matter, and hopefully they will keep in mind the vows they are about to take with one another as they come to a decision.

and OP, looking back I think your pretty calm right now compared to what my posts might suggest. I just think this is going to take another handful of conversations on the matter. good luck to you!

@UpstateCait: I do think it's weird they chose a date so close to ours. It puts a lot of stress on his family. They are egyptian and some family is planning on flying over to our wedding so I don't think you could expect people to fly to the US for ours, fly back, and then fly over again 3 weeks later. But everyone keeps saying it's not a traditional wedding (it's the brother's fiance's second time getting married) and I have no clue/details on the ceremony being on Friday thing. I don't even think they're going to invite all the out of town relatives like the FMIL is doing for ours. The whole situation is very weird. The brothers have an OK relationship, they never fight or anything, but they just don't really talk a lot. We all live in the same area.

We have been in something of a loosely similar situation. FI and his only sister are very close in age and best friends. She is on an international mission trip for our church until this spring. We were told she could decide to come home in April or June. I did not like planning the wedding date on her time table, but FI felt very strongly that she be able to attend, so we asked her to come home in April and when she agreed, planned our wedding for the end of May.

After that was settled FMIL expressed a desire to go and pick her up, which I agree would be very fun. But, as teachers FILS don't have the time off to go in April but could in June once school was out. Then FSIL started feeling like in April she would be coming home early, and asked if we might be willing to move the date to June. But, the planning is well under way and May is much more convenient with our school/work schedules. 

I was worried that FI would want to move it, but he felt that we'd given her an opportunity to come, being very upfront about the date from the beginning and compromising it so that she could come if she was willing to make it work. We did all that because we care about her coming. 

While I think that concidering how you'll feel down the road about missing FBIL's wedding it seems clear to me that he can't care that much about you attending, or have much respect for the two of you as he didn't even ask if you might have plans (like a honeymoon for instance) during the rest of the month of your wedding.